One to Watch: Onecast

We’re tracking a stealth startup called Onecast and/or 1cast that was apparently founded and funded by Craig McCaw, based on a tip from a commenter whom we have reason to believe may work for the company. The main guy at Onecast seems to be a fellow named Anthony Bontrager of Kirkland, Wash., though if we’re reading the LinkedIn tea leaves right, the company may also be partly based in San Francisco.

The company is apparently similar to RedLasso — the legallytroubledstartup that allows bloggers to search for and embed snippets of television — but according to our commenter, unlike RedLasso, Onecast already has deals with “the leading news programmers both here in the US and the UK.”

We learned from Bontrager’s Bebo profile that the company is “backed by telecom pioneer Craig McCaw.” And there’s more info about that in a conference bio, which calls McCaw the founder of Onecast and notes that Bontrager’s previous company, Broadstream Communications, “secure[d] the largest library of IP-content rights from companies such as NBC-Universal, Disney/ABC, ESPN, Starz, Discovery, Fox, Turner Networks and others.” Broadstream was an IPTV network services company sold to Avail Media in 2006.